What It is: You’ve heard of bitcoin, that magical digital money not attached to any national economy or banking system? Blockchain is the technology behind it. It’s a clever extension of existing encryption techniques that enables trusted, secure transactions of any...

What it is: A tiny encapsulated bit of circuitry, with sensors and a chip, that can be inserted into your brain (or actually, anywhere in your body), to check out the local conditions and report back. Here’s the actual paper in Cell from the UC Berkeley scientists and...

What it is: Pundits, start-ups, and marketing firms right now are throwing the term “Artificial Intelligence” like confetti on a parade. It’s the new “greenwashing.” What makes an AI system different from a really good program with massive computing power and a...

What it is: Keiichi Matsuda created a video to simulate an “augmented reality” or “hyper-reality” future, in which the real world around you is “augmented” with all kinds of information feeds. Take a look below, it’s a little over 6 minutes long and it is more than a...

Obamacare is built on the assumption that healthcare can be more productive, that we can squeeze more health per dollar out to the system that is built to give it to us. Practically everything I write is based on the same idea — big time. I believe we could do...

I talk to people all the time in health care at big civic gatherings; board retreats; conventions of nurses, physicians, managers of medical groups and accountable care organizations and health plans and device manufacturers. I give a talk, sit on a panel, run a...